


Variations on a Theme of John Sheppard

by kisahawklin



Series: Variations [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vegas, Author's Favorite, Child Abuse, Community: sga_episodefic, Dark, Episode: s05e19 Vegas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-14
Updated: 2009-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:04:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Rodney McKay who's lost his Sheppard finds an alternate reality drive. We meet him in Vegas!AU and follow his search for other John Sheppards. (Please read end notes for warnings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variations on a Theme of John Sheppard

**Author's Note:**

> Specific warnings at the bottom. Follow the link.

_Shit, shit, shit!_ Rodney thought, as he saw the fireball. _If John's in there..._

He drove down the deserted road, following the rigged up GPS that he had tapped into the FBI's systems. He squinted through his windshield at the raging fire burning up an old trailer. In front of it sat a red classic Camaro. Of course that's what Sheppard drove in this universe. He slammed on the brakes as soon as he got close enough to the scene to realize that was John Sheppard on his back, bleeding and possibly dying, and _damn it_, he hadn't caught a break in the last six dimensions he'd traveled to.

He threw himself out of the car and checked for Sheppard's pulse, thready but _there_, and breathed a sigh of relief. A quick look at the wound and listen to Sheppard's lungs and he was feeling better about things. Not fatal, didn't hit the lung. Sheppard was just suicidal, that's all, and Rodney really should have expected that.

"Wake up," Rodney said, putting heavy pressure on the wound.

"Fuck!" Sheppard said, his eyes snapping open. "Fuck, jesus, get off me!"

"No," Rodney said, reaching with one hand for the med kit in the car and falling short by a long shot. "You're not bleeding out, but the less blood you lose, the better. Did you hit your head? You look like you hit your head."

"Maybe," Sheppard said weakly. He looked like he was going to pass out. Rodney pressed down on the wound again. "Fuck, McKay, _knock it off_!"

That was better. Rodney let go long enough to knee his way over to the car and grab the med kit, wishing he had taken the phlebotomy training session Carson had offered back when they started going off-world. If he ever found another Carson he could trust, maybe he'd ask.

"The best I can do is a pressure bandage, and then we'll get you to the hospital."

Sheppard came around while Rodney worked, watching morbidly as Rodney dressed his wound. "How'd you get here so fast?" he asked, and damn, Rodney had really hoped to get away from here before the questions started.

"Never mind that. Let's just get you to the hospital."

"Ambulance?" Sheppard asked, and Rodney rolled his eyes.

"Would be helpful if they could get here in less than half an hour and if you needed more serious medical care than you do. You'll be fine, climb in. Chop, chop."

Rodney let Sheppard tuck his knees in before closing the door and driving like a bat out of hell.

* * *

_"Rodney."_

_Rodney watched the blood flow through his fingers, Sheppard's blood, _John_'s blood._

_"Don't talk, Colonel," Rodney said, packing another dressing on top of the gut wound, watching it stain red impossibly fast._

_"Rodney."_

_Rodney looked in Sheppard's eyes, and he knew, _christ_, he felt it like a goddamn punch to the stomach, Sheppard was two breaths from death's door._

_"Don't you die on me, Sheppard, I'll never forgive you, I'll never-"_

* * *

"What the hell?"

Rodney startled awake, someone's hand clenched around his shoulder, fingers digging in to the muscle painfully. He looked up to see a surprisingly well turned-out McKay.

"'m not from here," Rodney said, wiping a hand down his face to remove the last traces of the dream, Sheppard's blood still staining the black space behind his eyelids. "Sheppard's in the Stargate program where I come from."

"Did you come through the space-time tear?" McKay asked him, and he was sharp - sharper than Rodney himself used to be, sharper than most of the McKays he's met. "No, no you didn't." McKay's smile was predatory, like he knew Rodney had something he wanted, he just didn't know what it was yet.

"No," Rodney admitted, wishing he were a better liar. A ready-made excuse, no need to dash for his ship at the last second while the SGC, IOA, FBI or some other acronym tried to keep him from leaving. "But my ship burned up in atmosphere. Beamed myself down at the last second."

"Beamed?" McKay asked, and _shit_, how the hell had the Stargate program gotten to Atlantis without the help of the Asgard? "As in _transported_?" He positively gleamed with anticipation.

"Yes," Rodney said, and he supposed if he got away with giving them specs on beaming technology, it wouldn't be the narrowest escape he'd ever had.

Sheppard moaned, and McKay finally took his hand off Rodney's shoulder. He didn't really like this McKay - he was too weasely, too integrated in the politics, with his sharp eyes and smarmy smile.

"Sheppard?" Rodney asked at the same time as McKay. He glanced at McKay, smirking when he saw it had wiped the smile off his face. If there was one constant in all the alternate realities he'd visited, it was that his reaction to Sheppard was always the same. Him, the McKays, even the Merediths he'd met. Hopelessly drawn in to Sheppard's charm like moths to a flame.

"McKay?" Sheppard asked, craning his neck to look at them both. "And... McKay?" He flopped back on his bed. "Must be some good drugs," he mumbled.

"Not so much, Detective," McKay said, and sometimes Rodney wanted to strangle himself. The tone of his voice really grated on his nerves.

"I'm not from here," Rodney said, preferring the vague explanation. It was enough for most of them, and if this Sheppard needed more, he'd ask.

"Mmm," Sheppard answered, and let his eyes slip back closed.

"I'm not leaving," Rodney said, taking care to cross his arms and set his jaw before he announced it. "You can debrief me here if you want, but I'm not leaving."

McKay rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said, edging past Rodney and pulling in the chair from the other side of Sheppard's bed. "How did you get here?"

* * *

Sheppard had been dead nearly a year and a half when the _Daedalus_ with the alternate-reality drive popped into Rodney's life. Radek let him go up with SGA-1, and he immediately downloaded every bit of information he could find about the drive. It was Teyla that saved their asses, noticing the power spike in enough time for them to get to the jumper before the ship left their reality.

It took him another year of hermit-like seclusion to configure a drive that would work with a puddlejumper. Rodney had resigned from SGA-1 the day Sheppard died. He resigned as CSO a few days later, after making sure there was no way for them to send him back to Earth. He might not be interested in being in charge of the science program, but he wasn't going to give up his opportunity to play with the good toys. He was on standby, nominally required to assist with projects that Radek, the new CSO, assigned him. After the third attempt at getting Rodney to work on something involving desalination, Radek gave up and told him, "Fine. Work on whatever you want, then." Rodney had taken it to heart.

When he figured out that the drive would require that he stay in each alternate reality a set amount of time, he worried over it for weeks. What if he was stuck in a hostile environment, unable to leave the ship until his next jump? How much time would he need to find himself and figure out if a world was livable? When he finally settled on four days, he only ran a single simulation before he stocked the jumper with MREs, fresh underwear, and toothpaste and powered up the drive. He'd had it with living in this reality.

* * *

McKay scrutinized him for a while before shooting a look at the sleeping Sheppard.

"You're in love with him?" he asked, and damn if this McKay hadn't sussed it out quicker then just about every other not-involved-with-Sheppard McKay he'd met, save that one Meredith.

Rodney shrugged. "Not him."

"You're... gay... though?" McKay did not looked pleased.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "I'm bisexual, and I've found that I'm bisexual in seventy-four point one percent of the realities I've visited. Even several of those where I married Jennifer Keller."

McKay choked, his face turning pink. "Married? To Jennifer?"

"Twenty-one point four percent of the time. Single thirty point three percent. Involved with Sam Carter two point seven percent." McKay's eyes bugged nearly out of his head at that factoid. Rodney smirked, and added, "I was a woman all three times." He decided not to mention that two out of three times, Sam had been a man. "Involved with, married to, or mourning Sheppard, thirty-one point two percent."

And the other fourteen point three percent?" McKay asked.

"Involved with other people. Mostly people I don't know in my reality, though I was married to Danielle Jackson once."

McKay looked a little queasy, though whether it was from Rodney's mention of Danielle or a dawning understanding of the scope of alternate realities, Rodney couldn't tell. He got himself under control and straightened his ludicrously shiny tie. "How many realities have you visited?"

"A hundred sixty-seven."

McKay stared at him. "How many have been-"

"Inhabited by humans? Sixty-seven point one percent. The rest of the time we don't even exist as humans yet. Sometimes we're goo, sometimes we're monkeys, sometimes we're Neanderthals... I've seen us at every stage of development, pre-Industrial, the Dark Ages, you name it. Even two realities that were significantly further along technologically. But this is the mean. More than half of the realities with humans are right where we are - capitalism, the SGC and apple pie."

Rodney could talk about the statistics forever. He had a spreadsheet, but he also had a journal, his private thoughts about the development of humans and what key factors had spiked their development or hampered their growth (there are observations about himself and Sheppard too, only scribbled in the margins). He stopped talking, waiting for McKay to come up with another question, or gather his wits and ask about the technology, or -

"Why Sheppard?" he asked, and Rodney shrugged. If he knew the answer to that, he'd probably still be back on his Atlantis, working on desalination technology.

"And when we're involved with Jennifer, Sheppard..."

Rodney smiled. McKay was starting to get it. "Either our best friend or dead. Four times, Sheppard was an ex."

Rodney avoided the pronouns. He didn't think this McKay would like to know about the skew toward homosexual relationships - a much higher-than-average twenty-eight point six percent (a ridiculous sixty-five point seven percent when Sheppard was involved).

"I should probably..." McKay started, but he glanced nervously at the bed. "I should... the technology..."

Rodney shrugged. "He has the gene. You should recruit him."

McKay nodded, swallowed, nodded again. This McKay hid it well, but he was still as uncomfortable in his skin as Rodney used to be. It was good to know that well cut suits didn't get rid of his quirks, just kept them undercover.

"Besides, even if he's as smart as some of the other Sheppards - which he's _not_ \- he won't be able to follow the theory for beaming technology."

McKay smiled smugly and pulled out a laptop out of his bag. "Tell me."

* * *

The reality before this had lost its John Sheppard in Afghanistan, shot down and killed during the rescue attempt that seemed to be a seminal point in Sheppard's life in nearly every timeline.

Two realities before, the most advanced life forms on earth had been dinosaurs.

Three realities before, in a first, both he and Sheppard had been female. They were involved, and running a coffee shop together. By Rodney's estimation, Sheppard was male eighty-seven point five percent of the time, and Rodney was male only sixty-six point one percent of the time. Sam was ambi-sexual too, male fifty-eight percent of the time. It sure put a whole new spin on his name (Sam's too, for that matter).

Four realities before, Sheppard had died as a child - he had been in the car with his mother when she was killed by a drunk driver. Rodney understood that there were dimensions where Sheppard had died young, or perhaps never lived at all, but he hadn't experienced one before this. It hurt, in a way his own premature deaths didn't. He stayed close to Jeannie for the rest of that trip, spending his remaining three days backtracking her extraordinary career, from her first graduate article to her Nobel nomination two years prior.

Five realities before, Earth had still been in its primordial goo stages.

Six realities before, Sheppard had lived in Texas, happily married to Nancy and working his way up the Air Force chain of command. Meredith was his next door neighbor - single, miserable, and living with six cats.

Seven realities before, Rodney had been certain he'd found his new home. He believed it with every fiber of his being, believed it so much he had almost missed his ride out of there.

* * *

Sheppard had been in the military, dishonorably discharged for his actions in Afghanistan, and making his living as the proprietor of a used bookstore. His history was similar enough to Rodney's Sheppard that Rodney felt pretty confident they were alike in all the ways that mattered. McKay in this reality had died in a lab accident in graduate school. He hated to think she could have been that stupid; he preferred to think it was sabotage by a jealous colleague.

By the time he had done his background research, he had three days to meet Sheppard and convince him they should be friends.

The meeting had been simple enough. The bookshop was musty but tolerable, and carried quite the selection of classic sci-fi. There were a couple of chairs, not in particularly good repair, but Rodney took up residence in one anyway.

"You gonna buy those, or just sit there and read them?"

Rodney had secured a California driver's license and a couple of credit cards pretty easily. The more realities he went to, the easier it became to fake plastic. It was the paper stuff that was hard to manage. Cash was never the same from one reality to the next.

"I'm buying them," Rodney said, enough snip to his voice to let Sheppard know who he was, but not as much as he might have used if it had been someone else. "Is there a problem with enjoying the ambience of your store?"

Sheppard snorted. "Ambience. Right. Listen, if you want to read them, buy them and take them home."

"Ah," Rodney said, and this was the tricky part. If he didn't hit the tone just right, Sheppard might think Rodney was hitting on him, and while that had worked out okay a couple of times, usually it meant running for his life. "I just moved here yesterday, and I hate sitting at home alone."

Sheppard laughed, and Rodney's heart stopped for a second at the raucous braying sound. Even after all these realities, Sheppard's laugh was a rarity.

"Well, I'm not great company," Sheppard said, but his smile said otherwise.

"Maybe not," Rodney said, "but I was talking about the books."

Sheppard laughed again and invited him out to dinner.

Two days later, Rodney was gleeful. Not only did this Sheppard like him immediately in that strange way Rodney never quite understood, he was pretty sure this Sheppard was gay.

He clambored up the back steps to Sheppard's house, nervously running a hand over his hair and checking his pockets for the extremely expensive Raiders tickets he'd bought for that weekend's game. Before he could knock, he heard a noise, a whimpering sound. It sounded almost like a wounded animal, but this Sheppard didn't have a pet (and _that_ was a huge anomaly - ninety-one point one percent of Sheppards had dogs and another three point six percent had cats, birds, or lizards... one even had a tarantula). Rodney walked around the back to see if something was caught in the chain link fence that partitioned Sheppard's yard.

The sound got quieter the further away from the house he got, so he backtracked. It sounded like it was coming from the basement, like maybe a stray cat had gotten stuck. He tried to look in through one of the windows, but they were blacked out. One was cracked, with a hole big enough for a small cat to get through. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in, but it was too dark to make anything out but indistinct mound-like shapes. He went back around to the rear entrance and knocked, waiting for Sheppard to open up. When he didn't come, Rodney peeked in the garage. He knew Sheppard wasn't in the store; he had checked before coming over. It was silly to assume that Sheppard would have been home though, and Rodney rolled his eyes at himself for being so stupidly eager. He knocked again to be sure, and the whimpering got louder.

He really should have gotten Sheppard's cell number.

Rodney had never been one to be able to listen to any kind of suffering, and whatever this animal was, it sounded like it was pretty bad off. Ticking through the responses that most of the Sheppards would give him on breaking into the house versus not helping an animal in pain, he decided it was worth the risk. He wouldn't snoop (unless Sheppard still wasn't home when he had finished with the animal) and really, that whining sound couldn't be good.

Picking the locks was easy. The third reality he visited, Sheppard was dead and the McKay in that world was married to a woman named Misti. It took him all of half an hour to find himself - a DA in Pittsburgh, rundown house and three kids. Sheppard had been reported KIA a couple of years before. Rodney wondered briefly if he had been in Atlantis, but then he pushed the thought away and set about learning some useful skills. He ran into a kid pickpocketing on the subway and cornered him, threatening him with the cops until he taught Rodney how to pick locks. He learned a little about picking pockets too (he'd always had deft hands), but it took a sort of forgettableness that Rodney was never going to achieve. Just standing around made people look at him, and he'd never really learned how to keep his mouth shut.

He broke into Sheppard's house in just under two minutes. There were a ridiculous number of locks, and Rodney intended to have a talk with him about paranoia. It didn't stop him from relocking them all behind him.

A quick turn through the kitchen showed a functional setup and more fresh fruit than he would have guessed. Maybe this Sheppard liked to cook. Rodney would like that, like it a lot.

The living room was cozy, a tiny, ancient TV set off to the side of a room made for reading. Huge bookshelves, lots of light, cushy chairs and a long sofa with a hideously ugly handmade afghan on it.

Rodney pulled open doors as he went, pantry, broom closet, coat closet, and finally found the door to the basement under the stairs to the second level. He considered peeking at the bedroom but remembered his promise not to pry until he'd saved whatever poor creature was trapped in the basement.

Suddenly he felt nervous. He chalked it up to his longtime fear of basements, but he couldn't help the thump-thump-thump of his pulse as he turned the knob and pushed the door open. _Of course_ the thing creaked like no one had gone into the basement for years, and now Rodney's palms began to sweat, because the basement was dark, and there wasn't a light switch anywhere nearby.

The sounds seemed more desperate now and a little muffled; Rodney took a deep breath and stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. Obviously the animal was trapped somewhere and was going to need help disentangling itself. The first stair creaked, a groaning sound much deeper than the door.

Once he started down the stairs, he went full tilt, feet banging on the wooden steps like conga drums. He felt a little better when he was at the bottom, but then the hair on the back of his neck stood up, so he whirled around and glanced back up at the landing.

No one there. Of course not, Sheppard wasn't home, and he didn't... Rodney stopped as he realized that while it was unlikely Sheppard had moved without changing his address at the DMV, it was still possible, and _oh my god_ had he just broken into some random person's home?

He tamped down on the beginnings of hysteria and concentrated on the near-constant whining sound coming from under the stairs. The cat (definitely a cat, he'd convinced himself) must have gotten caught in a tangle of wires, an air vent maybe, maybe some crumbling drywall. He'd get the cat and get out of the house, and wait patiently at the coffee shop on the corner, watching out the window for Sheppard's car.

There was a drop cloth stapled to the stairs, a crude but effective way to hide the space underneath. Rodney picked up a corner, still blinking, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and nearly had a heart attack when a pair of eyes stared back at him. He dropped the cloth and clapped a hand over his mouth. _Oh god_.

The whining sound spiralled up in volume and pitch, and he shushed it, shoving the bulk of the drop cloth onto the steps above so he could shed what little light there was on the cage.

The cage.

A small wire cage barely big enough for a dog, and it held a boy who couldn't have even been twelve, half-naked and out of his mind with fear. Rodney's stomach lurched, but he kept it together enough to soothe the kid. He shushed and hummed and made nonsense sounds while he frantically looked around the room for anything to help him. He didn't have the tools to pick a heavy damn padlock, and there weren't any knives or other tools around to even cut the kid's hands and feet free. The gag carved the boy's face in half and made his eyes bug out, and Rodney was just about ready to throw up when he heard the sound of an engine, a car pulling into the driveway.

_Shit, fuck, shit!_ he thought, _how the hell do I get myself into these messes?_ He put his hands up placatingly, hoping the boy would understand he should keep quiet.

Rodney ran back up the stairs and shut the door to the basement, hoping to buy a little time. He ran back down, blinking his eyes to readjust them after having seen sunlight again, and made a wide circuit of the basement. Next to the stairs, he found an interior room that had a door with a padlock, and Rodney didn't think twice, hoping to hell it was shoddy construction and he had enough time to make a little noise before the sick fuck (not Sheppard, his mind insisted, _not Sheppard_) got out of his car. Two solid kicks and the door splintered around the lockplate, and Rodney swallowed hard as he swung the door open.

There was a table with several sets of leather straps built in, stained a dull reddish brown, and an old-fashioned buffet that held several torture devices Rodney knew of, and a great many he had never seen before. He held his hand over his mouth, the bile burning in his throat. He could hear footsteps upstairs, and his mind raced. Maybe he wouldn't even notice someone had broken in. Rodney had walked here, so there was no car to give him away. He had carefully closed every door he opened. He hadn't moved anything. God, why hadn't he just waited until he saw Sheppard at the shop tomorrow? _No_, he shook himself mentally, _it's not Sheppard, he moved, he doesn't live here anymore, he... it's _not_ Sheppard_.

Rodney grabbed a heavy, cast iron device, a strange pear-shaped instrument, weighing it as he tightened his grip around the longish handle. His stomach protested when he smelled the thing; apparently cleanliness was too close to godliness for this monster, because the stench of dried blood was overwhelming. Rodney finally gave in to the urge to throw up and did it as quietly as he could.

There were footsteps upstairs again, Rodney listened as the person went through the kitchen into the living room. Rodney closed the door to the torture room as best he could - there was no way to make it look like it hadn't been broken into - and came back around to stand under the stairs, next to the cage. The boy stared at him, silent with huge nearly-black eyes, and Rodney tried to look brave, or at least encouraging. He patted the boy's fingers, the only parts of him Rodney could reach.

The footsteps stopped, and Rodney hoped he had gotten away for the moment. If he could just wait until the guy went to bed, if he... _idiot_! He fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. The kid's eyes lit up, and Rodney shook his head, trying not to give the kid false hope.

"Nine-one-one?" he whispered, and the shine went out of the kids eyes. "Okay, not nine-one-one." He paced the two step area next to the cage. The damn emergency number could be so random. "How many numbers?" he asked the kid, holding up a finger. He added another finger, and another, and another and finally the kid nodded his head maniacally.

"Four numbers. First one," Rodney said, using the same method, and the kid nodded on 'three'. "Is it three-three-three-three?" Rodney asked, since repeated numbers seemed to be a commonality. The kid was going to nod his head right off his body in a minute if Rodney didn't get him to calm down.

He heard the footsteps come right up to the basement door. _Fuck_. He pulled the drop cloth back down with the hand holding his impromptu weapon and fumbled the phone in the other, dialing the emergency number and holding it up to his ear. He leaned over the cage and held a finger up to his lips. The boy nodded solemnly.

_"Emergency services,"_ a woman said in a calm voice.

Rodney spoke clearly and quietly. "I am at six ninety-seven Oak street. There's a boy being held captive in the basement, the sick asshole who owns this place just got home, and now we're trapped down here. Send the police immediately."

He shoved the phone into his pocket without turning it off and stood next to the boy's cage. The person was standing just outside the door. Had he heard? What was he waiting for? Rodney shivered again as he thought of Sheppard fighting with himself, trying to convince himself to leave the boy alone. He gritted his teeth and whispered, "It's not Sheppard." The boy stared at him, but he didn't show any sign of recognition. Good. Rodney was right.

The doorknob rattled a little, then turned, and Rodney cursed every god he could think of and then some as the door creaked for what seemed like forever. The man at the top of the stairs chuckled a little, a low, creepy sound that made Rodney want to shove his makeshift weapon down the guy's throat.

He settled down, resting his back against the wall and waiting. The guy came down the steps slowly, letting his weight settle on each step, making the stairs creak ominously. Rodney felt the bile climb back up his throat as he realized it was being done purposefully, to scare the kid. It was working - the boy was trembling, though that could have been because he was sitting on the ground in nothing but his underwear and a t-shirt.

Rodney twined his fingers with the kid's and gave him a grave nod. That seemed to calm him, and Rodney let go and twisted his hands around the neck of the pear-shaped maul in his hands. The weight of it reassured him. A good hit to the head would knock out anyone this side of Ronon.

The creaking stopped and Rodney heard the thunk of a heavy bootheel touch down on the cement floor. He flipped through his mind, trying to remember if Sheppard wore boots in this reality; no, he didn't think so. Sneakers, yes, he was wearing Nikes at the shop. Some small part of him relaxed, the part that wanted some shred of proof that this couldn't possibly be Sheppard.

The scrape of boots turning on the cement shook him again. That was an about face; there was no reason to do it except to make that scraping noise and freak the kid out even more. Rodney's mind went back into overdrive. _Lots of people have military training, it didn't mean anything, it's _not_ Sheppard!_

He pushed off the wall and crouched, ready to spring when not-Sheppard pulled up the drop cloth. One good swing was all he was likely to get, he had to make it count.

"Hello, my pretty," Sheppard's voice said as the shroud was lifted. Rodney froze, weapon raised for his strike.

The split-second of deranged fondness on Sheppard's face was enough to get Rodney to move. He swung, but surprise took its toll on his aim, and he connected with Sheppard's shoulder instead of his head.

"God damn you!" Rodney shouted, rushing out of his hiding place and swinging wildly. "He's my fucking _hero_, you can't ruin him for me like this." Sheppard avoided his blows easily, jumping back a little each time until Rodney had him backed up against workbench.

"Rodney," Sheppard said, in a eerily reasonable voice, like he wasn't being threatened with a torture device he'd used on small boys before. "Rodney, wait-"

"No!" Rodney growled and swung again, bringing the heavy device down on the workbench. "How many have you killed?"

Sheppard slipped sideways, out of Rodney's forward press. Rodney hefted his maul as he turned and stepped forward into Sheppard's space.

Right into the knife Sheppard stabbed into his belly.

"Seven," Sheppard answered coldly, as Rodney doubled over, vision blurry, "including you."

Rodney heard the boy's whine behind him, and there was no time to worry about the hole in his gut. He swung the maul in an upward arc, catching Sheppard on the chin and laying him out, spread-eagled on the floor. Rodney shuffled over to look down Sheppard, who clearly had a broken jaw and sported a hazy kind of look Rodney'd always associated with concussion.

"You bastard," Rodney said softly. "You're supposed to be the good guy."

The look in Sheppard's eyes changed to something that seemed almost pleading. Maybe part of Sheppard was fighting this, wanted not to do whatever horrifying things he did to these boys. Maybe the good part of Sheppard was still in there.

Sheppard held his arms out, locking eyes with Rodney. _Kill me_, the Sheppard in his mind said, an echo of another threat when something evil had taken over his body. _You have to kill me, Rodney._

* * *

McKay gasped. "What did you do?"

Rodney ignored the question by poking his chopsticks in his Pad Thai and taking a big bite. McKay scowled at him, or maybe at the lime hanging off the corner of the box. Rodney didn't know how he had missed out, but he was glad to be one of the seventeen percent of McKays without citrus or other allergies.

"Come on," McKay insisted. "Did you put him out of his misery?"

"Put me out of my misery?" Sheppard said blearily, lifting his head to look at them and then groaning. "You mean the thing in my head that's trying to pound its way out of my skull?"

Rodney smiled softly and pressed the call button for the nurse. McKay stood up and looked down at Sheppard, as if seeing him for the first time. "You did good out there," he said. "I should've said it before."

Sheppard looked between them a couple of times and Rodney raised his shoulders in a vague _I don't know_ gesture.

"So, you're, what, just visiting?" he asked, and Rodney smiled as he felt the familiar pull of affection for Sheppard, the easy deepening of their friendship without so much as a stray thought for the mechanics of interpersonal relationships.

"He knows a hundred other versions of you," McKay said, pointing at Rodney.

Sheppard took the news with aplomb, chewing on his lip thoughtfully as the nurse came in, took his vitals, and gave him some pills.

"What's the mean?" Sheppard asked, and Rodney grinned, revising his estimate of this Sheppard's intelligence.

"Pilot, Air Force, Afghanistan. After that there's two main tracks: one that leads to McMurdo and Atlantis and one that leads to..." Rodney waved his hand up and down Sheppard's body, "...some version of the life you're living now."

Sheppard smirked. "Some version."

"Yes," Rodney answered, and crossed his arms.

"Okay then," Sheppard said, seeming unconcerned. He picked up the remote and flipped on the TV. "Is there television where you're from?"

* * *

After Sheppard's eyes had drooped and closed again, Rodney turned off the TV and McKay continued quizzing him.

"You missed something here - obviously the energy quotient-"

"I didn't miss anything," Rodney said, rubbing his eyes. "Your thinking is too limited."

McKay scowled at him, but didn't disagree. Rodney'd found out just how little of the Ancient technology they'd gotten working; with their limited understanding and surprising narrow-mindedness, there were a lot more accidents and a lot fewer last minute saves. McKay was still brilliant, but the hard edge of his understanding meant he didn't, couldn't, would never pick things up as quickly as Rodney.

Rodney smiled to himself. One of the things about alternate-reality hopping was the sheer volume of differences you could have with yourself. He's seen McKays that blew him away in their ability to absorb and collate information, put it together and make something more out of it. He's also seen plenty of McKays like this one; who got stuck somewhere along the line and never figured out how to think around it. He's more and more surprised this reality ever found Atlantis.

"So how many men have you slept with?"

Rodney's head jerked up at the question. "None," he said through a yawn, stretching his arms overhead.

"But you said..." McKay looked flummoxed. His eyes went sharp as he changed tack. "Not with any of the Sheppards?"

Rodney shrugged. "Most of them were dead, unreachable, or in relationships."

"What if you don't like it?"

Rodney yawned again. "It's sex. How bad can it be?"

McKay's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he crossed his arms belligerently. "Was I happy with Jennifer?"

Rodney shrugged. "I suppose so. It's not like there's a standard scale of happiness. You thinking you should get a divorce so you can be with her?"

Rodney smiled grimly at the shock on McKay's face. "Gina won't _give_ me a divorce, for your information." Rodney had known this; they were both cheating, but he was paying for her expensive habits. McKay blushed, an angry-looking reddish-pink. "We didn't know how long we'd be away from Earth. I was faithful for eighteen months in Atlantis. It's more than she can say."

Rodney nodded agreeably. He didn't judge himself anymore. How could he? He had deserted his own reality. Nothing these plebian McKays could do would ever be worse than that.

"I'm not a bad person," McKay said.

Rodney nodded again. "I know."

They sat thoughtfully for a while, Rodney's head bobbing down to his chest. McKay must have been going through some pretty intense soul-searching in the interim, because when he said, "Why don't you have sex with this Sheppard," he had Rodney's full attention.

"You're stuck here now, you might as well," McKay continued blithely. "I'm sure the SGC will want to hire you; if Sheppard really has the gene, maybe you can both come to Atlantis."

"Why don't _you_ have sex with this Sheppard?" Rodney snapped. He couldn't stay; he didn't want this McKay thinking he was going to have anything to do with them after Sheppard got out of the hospital.

"Why don't you have sex with each other?" Sheppard asked, and Rodney laughed, turning to look at the wide awake Sheppard mocking them both with a raised eyebrow.

McKay looked like he had choked on something, the pinkish blush turning an angry red. "I don't... I'm not... No!" He looked back and forth from Sheppard to Rodney, his eyes going hard. "I was trying to make this reality comfortable for you, since you're stuck here."

"Thanks," Rodney said sincerely. "But Sheppard here has a say about our potential but so far non-existent love life, and I'm not really interested in being a second-class _you_."

"What?" McKay looked like he might have a stroke. The vein in the center of his forehead was standing out dangerously. "What do you mean? You don't want to work for the SGC? You don't want to come to Atlantis?"

Rodney didn't say anything. He'd learned the value of silence the hard way. Unfortunately, he was now speaking Sheppard's language, and _his_ eyes widened in recognition. Before Rodney could do more than hold up a finger, Sheppard was speaking, giving up information like it was going out of style.

"You're leaving," Sheppard said flatly. "You're going to your next reality and leaving us behind."

Rodney glared.

"You told me your ship burned up," McKay said, and then slapped a hand over his face. "And I believed you. I'm an _idiot_."

Rodney kind of thought so too, but was feeling generous enough not to say so.

"I'm not a good enough Sheppard," Sheppard said, and that was the weirdest thing any Sheppard had said to him, including the one who told Rodney he was afraid of toilets.

"You're a fine Sheppard," Rodney said, deliberately making his voice as soothing as possible. "You did a great job with the wraith, and nearly killed yourself to boot. Sound just like every other Sheppard I know." McKay was on the phone, whispering adamantly. "I just have to go. This McKay's not so bad. Take care of him."

"We could have sex," Sheppard said, and his smirk didn't completely belie the desperation in his voice. Rodney smiled back at him, his own smile infinitely more fond than smirky.

"No way, straight man," Rodney said, and started to back away from the bed. "Take care of yourself."

He got to the door before signaling to McKay. "Don't let him kill himself."

"No, McKay, wait!" McKay shouted, but Rodney let the door slam shut. He knew he had less than two minutes to exit the building or he was going to be taken in to the SGC, likely in handcuffs. He thought Sheppard would be proud of the skills he'd gained as he learned how to evade the military he used to work for. He slid down the rails of the stairs, three floors in half a minute.

He set off the fire alarm by pushing the fire exit open, and gave himself a quick makeover before stepping into the lobby - pulling off his jacket and wrapping it around his waist, covering his head with a bandanna, and putting on Sheppard's aviators.

He headed into the lobby of the hospital, where everyone looked distressed at the lights and sirens going off. He insinuated himself into a knot of scared people and herded them toward the door with an authoritative voice. Adrenaline hit his system with a jolt when he saw the black vans, four of them pulling into the far end of the parking lot.

He hurried out toward the cars, leaving the freaked out group of people behind. He lengthened his strides and leaned backwards from his hips, hands in his pockets like he was going for a stroll. When he was a couple of rows of cars in, he ducked down, looking for an older car he could jimmy open and hotwire.

It was the cleanest escape he'd made yet.

* * *

Rodney still had a day and a half left in this reality, and he took the puddlejumper up and out, wondering if he should fly closer to the moon or maybe Mars, but in the end he parked the jumper outside just atmosphere and watched the world spin slowly beneath him.

* * *

In the next reality, McKay was happily ensconced in Atlantis, as were Sara Sheppard and her husband, Daniel Jackson. Elizabeth Weir had been killed in an Embassy bombing, so Daniel had been tapped to head the expedition, and Sara (_Sara!_ He was never going to let Sheppard live that down) didn't have an official title, but from the reports Rodney read (and he could read them all - this SGC wasn't _nearly_ paranoid enough about security), she was basically Rodney's second in command. He spent his four days imagining their Atlantis while making basic repairs, stocking up on canned food and bottled water, and doing his laundry.

The next jump was smooth, but the world was a mess. The Atlantis expedition had been evacuated and Sheppard had been listed as KIA. Rodney was married with children again, a sports analyst, of all things, with a weekly talk show on ESPN. No wonder the expedition had failed.

The third jump was to a reality where Sheppard was a drunk auto mechanic and had never met Merry McKay, who was the fourth wealthiest woman in the world. Rodney spent four days trying to find a way to get them to meet.

The fourth jump was to an Earth where human development seemed to have stalled out at the Australopithicus stage. He taught a group of them how to make simple tools and spent the other three days in the jumper, running his computer from the jumper's power cells.

The fifth jump took him to a reality where everyone spoke Portuguese. There were no European names anywhere, and he had to run away from a well-meaning psychiatrist who, as far as Rodney could tell, thought he was making up his own language in a delusion of grandeur.

The sixth jump saw a McKay who was such a chess genius that he built a version of Deep Blue because no one else could challenge him. Sheppard flew commercial. His little black book (stored in his email program, the idiot) had hundreds of names in it.

The seventh jump brought him face to face with the Highland McKays, which was one of his least favorite iterations of his family. None of them looked like him, and they were all still wearing skirts and running around bare-assed. The Sheppard clan wasn't much better, but at least they had pants, and some of their hair did Sheppard's sticky-up thing, which made one point for Sheppard's 'it just does that naturally!' argument.

The eighth jump, he found a world where he had never existed.

* * *

His parents had never met, much less married and produced offspring. His mother had a daughter named Janet with an accountant from Vancouver, but she wasn't anything like Jeannie at all, so Rodney didn't bother looking her up.

Sheppard flew charter flights with a company called Minkin Air, which Rodney might have thought was the worst name ever, except the old man who ran the company was like a second father to Sheppard, and his name was Mac Minkin.

Sheppard looked exactly the same as every other Sheppard - the looks never changed much from male to male. The females were surprisingly varied, including a buxom blonde that had made Rodney's dick sit up and pay attention.

He was the opposite, his female form almost always sporting blonde curls and usually about five foot eight, but his male form ranged from five foot five to six foot four - and he and Sheppard were quite the couple in that reality. He had stayed skinny there, thanks to the extra height. He had a tendency to be a little pudgy around the middle if he wasn't running for his life on a regular basis, so his academic or research selves were often fat, though one in six was practically anorexic - usually due to extreme allergies.

Rodney cloaked the puddlejumper in geosynchronous orbit and got to work setting up plastic for himself and figuring out how he was going to meet John Sheppard and convince him Rodney was the best friend he'd ever had.

He considered chartering a flight, but Sheppard wouldn't be able to leave the cockpit, and they'd think he was crazy if he asked to _sit_ in the cockpit, so that was out. Sheppard was also a flight instructor in this reality, so he decided to suck it up and take a lesson.

"Why not?" Rodney asked, waving his arms at Mac later that day. "He's a certified flight instructor, I checked."

"He doesn't teach," Mac said adamantly. "Only got certified 'cause I said I'd drop him like a bad penny if he didn't."

"And why did you make him get certified, if he wouldn't teach?" Rodney whined.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Mac nodded his head to a plane sitting out on the tarmac, a hyperactive golden retriever running around it and Sheppard reaching up into its belly.

"Can I go out there?" Rodney asked, glancing back at the old guy.

Mac shrugged. "Don't see why not. Shep's got her shut down for the day, nobody else is up right now."

"Okay," Rodney said, "sure."

Mac shut down the office and shoved Rodney out the door, into the heat of the late afternoon. It was a shock from the air conditioning, and his ears were blasted with a loud and warbly sound that had to be Johnny Cash, though it didn't sound like any of the songs that Rodney knew. It actually sounded pretty close to _Like a Virgin_.

As he and Mac walked up, Sheppard bent down to pet the dog, and that move was so reminiscent of Colonel Sheppard's simple grace that Rodney had to stop and turn his head away for a minute.

"Shep," Mac said, clapping a heavy hand on Sheppard's shoulder. "Got someone I'd like you to meet."

Sheppard stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans and Rodney sucked in a breath. Sheppard was wearing a black, a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled back - for a second, Rodney could have sworn it was his Atlantis uniform. Then he spotted the familiar black wrist band, and something in his chest loosened, something that had been knotted up so long he had forgotten it was there.

"Rodney McKay," Rodney said, debating for a half a second before sticking his hand out for a handshake. Sheppard nodded and gripped his hand tightly.

"John Sheppard."

Rodney opened his mouth to say, _I know_, or _Thank god_, or something, _anything_, but before he could force the words out, Mac slapped him on the back hard enough to make him cough.

"Mr. McKay here wants to know why I made you get your instructor's certificate if you're never gonna teach anybody to fly," Mac said, and Rodney had a vague thought about correcting the 'mister' but didn't. Couldn't, because he was waiting, leaning forward to hear whatever Sheppard might say.

"Because he thought I'd change my mind," Sheppard said, smiling fondly at the old man.

"Will you?" Rodney asked, and even though Sheppard thought he was asking about a flying lesson, Rodney's breath caught while he waited for an answer.

"Not likely."

Rodney watched Sheppard as he absently scratched his chest. Rodney could see the chain from his dogtags there, dogtags that matched the pair hanging around his own neck. He'd bet they had matching sunglasses too. "Any way I could change your mind?"

"Not likely," Sheppard said again, but when Rodney met his eyes, he was smiling.

"I could pay you a ridiculous amount of money."

"Don't need money," Sheppard said, resting his hands on his hips in an achingly familiar move.

"What _do_ you need?" Rodney asked, and _christ_, this Sheppard was getting to him more than usual.

Sheppard glanced at the diver's watch on his wrist. "Dinner."

"I can provide dinner," Rodney said eagerly, and the very few things he'd learned about being subtle in all these worlds slipped right through his fingers as he stared at John Sheppard number one hundred seventeen.

"I'm picky," Sheppard said, his eyes not leaving Rodney's. Rodney was unable to look away from John's gaze, trapped by those sharp eyes, watching him closely, too closely.

"So you choose what's for dinner." Sheppard's smirk evened out a little, into a full-fledged smile. "I'm pretty magnanimous about food," he added. Living on Chili Mac and Funyuns made you appreciate whatever you could get.

That seemed to break the strange spun glass texture of their conversation, and the tarmac swam back into focus. Mac watched the two of them silently from where he was kneeling next to the dog.

"You got three days off," Mac said, and Sheppard's mouth dropped open. "Don't you even think about backtalking me. He paid for you for three days, and if you're not going to teach him how to fly, then you ain't going up neither."

Rodney blinked. The offer had come up in the roundabout conversation they'd had about Sheppard's certification, but they'd hardly worked out the details, and he certainly hadn't provided payment.

"Come on," Rodney said, holding a hand out to Sheppard. "I'm starving."

**Author's Note:**

> Specific Warnings: One of the AU!Johns is dead, and another is a serial killer that tortures and murders children.
> 
> With many thanks to a slew of people - especially [silverraven](http://www.silverraven.dreamwidth.org), [ninquelosse](http://www.ninquelosse.livejournal.com), [meansgirl](http://www.meansgirl.dreamwidth.org), [cindyjade](http://www.cindyjade.livejournal.com), and most especially [shaenie](http://shaenie.dreamwidth.org) for her mindreading and generosity.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fifty-One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24450) by [danceswithgary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithgary/pseuds/danceswithgary)




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